62 THE WAY OF A TROUT WITH A FLY 



down again naturally makes more of a swirl, from the energy 

 expended in the movement of turning down again, than 

 does a fish hovering just below the surface and merely 

 putting up a nose. The size of the fly also makes a 

 difference. The tiniest insects are sipped, the larger ones 

 are taken down with much more of a swirl. The rise to the 

 blue-winged olive at night (and by day, too) is indicated 

 by quite a large kidney-shaped whorl; and the large dark 

 olive of spring and late autumn is taken in a similar way. 

 The degree of eagerness of the fish also has an effect on the 

 size of the swirl he makes in taking. The fondness of the 

 trout for the iron-blue dun, for instance, leads him to take 

 it with an agitation which betrays him to the observant 

 angler as feeding on the iron-blue dun or its nymph, 

 though no iron-blue dun may have been observed on the 

 surface or in the air. Naturally, too, the trout makes less 

 of a ring when he can be confident of securing his fly than 

 when he has to hurry to secure it ere it be whipped off the 

 water by wind or its natural tendency to take flight. 



Where duns are floating in eddies one often sees trout 

 sailing gently under and sipping them softly. Occasion- 

 ally in these positions one sees a succession of head-and- 

 tail rises — first the neb appears and descends, then the 

 back fin, and then the upper portion of the tail fin. It is 

 my belief that this in general indicates that the trout is 

 taking duns which through accident or defective hatching 

 are lying spent or on their sides on the surface. The 

 same type of rise in the open stream may generally, 

 especially in the morning, before the dun hatch, and in 

 the evening, be taken to indicate that the trout are taking 

 spent spinners. In the eddies and over weed-beds, how- 

 ever, when no fly is visible on the surface, it may mean 

 that the trout is taking nymphs, just in the film of the 

 surface, about to hatch, or, it may be, swarming for refuge 



